Let’s Talk About | The Lion King (2019)

Last updated on 27 December 2024

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I finally saw The Lion King and I have thoughts.

Was it worthwhile? Was it everything I hoped it would be? Did it live up to the hype? I’m not so sure it did. Let me explain and share some of my thoughts.

The Lion King was a great movie, don’t get me wrong, but I think it would have been better without the first one. What I mean is that it was a great movie in-and-of itself, but even with today’s technology, advances in CGI, and even exciting musical endeavours, it’s nothing on the original. I’ve decided that I think that for several reasons.

The re-watch factor

The Lion King (1994) is my favourite Disney movie, sharing the spot of number one with Beauty and the Beast, closely followed by Mulan. The original Lion King (OGLK) has this epic re-watch quality about it. It’s one of those heart-wrenching, but beautiful stories that you can watch again and again, and never get sick of (at least in my opinion).

I’m not saying you could watch it every week and still love it after a year (also props to you if you can!), but every year sitting down and watching it, perhaps, isn’t going to kill your love for it. If anything you’ll be reminded how much you love it. It’s similar with so many of our favourite movies.

While I would watch this ‘live-action’ one again, it’s not going to be one that I re-watch over and over for the rest of my life. Why is that? Mostly due to the fact that we already have a Lion King that we can watch over and over again. It’s been done, we’ve got the story, we’ve got the soundtrack committed to memory a hundred times over. A re-watch of the 2019 movie might happen, in fact it’s quite likely that in a year we might get around to hitting play … but it’s not going to be one of my go-to re-watch movies.

The ‘live-action’

Jiminy Cricket, those graphics were incredible! There is no denying that, nor the talented women and men who poured their souls into making everything look so blimmin’ amazing. The detailing on the lions’ fur, the landscapes, the textures on the ground and plants and waters, the ‘live’ feel to it all; absolutely stunning. This movie was a visual masterpiece.

However! Because 2019 LK was so life-like, I feel like we lost of a lot of the OGLK flavour in it. There are just some things that you can’t do when you’re working with ‘real’ animals; all those facial expressions and dramatic gestures and warthogs dressing in drag and doing the hula are limited to animated versions.

Scenes like Pumba and Timon ending ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight?’ with tears shooting from their eyes is one of the greatest scenes, along with Simba’s face when he realises Mufasa is dead (SOB!) or Scar chopping down on Zazu without actually eating him or rolling his eyes. Apparently real lions don’t roll their eyes. Apparently meerkats and warthogs don’t don grass skirts and put flowers behind their ears. Apparently lions don’t keep hornbills in bone cages. And it’s those very things that make the OGLK great.

Also, it was very hard to tell which lioness was which at the end there, when Nala is all grown up. The pride looked like carbon copies of each other, which I get is how real prides are, but would have been easier to tell them apart if they had a floppy ear, or a birthmark, or something. Anything. Got a little like ‘which one was that?’ at the end there.

The music

While the music was really great, and they did a good job of keeping the old songs but re-mastering them to set them apart from OGLK, I felt like they weren’t as strong as the old one. They were beautiful, yes, but the passion and the punch of the original soundtrack was just so much more. I can’t quite put my finger on why, because it wasn’t that the singers weren’t vocally strong (Beyoncé, for goodness sake).

Perhaps the music itself was softer in nature, or I’m not remembering it quite right (*goes and listens to soundtrack again*), but it just didn’t impress me as much as the classic tracks did (and still do). ‘Be Prepared’, the song that Scar sings when he rallies the hyenas…thoroughly underwhelming.

The script

One thing I was really impressed with was that probably a good 75% of the script was exactly the same. I found myself mouthing along with the OGLK and it still coming straight from the mouths of these characters. Not everything was the same, and nor should it be, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much they kept in.

I also loved the little bits of 2019 they threw in there, as well as other Disney references. Pumba and Timon saying ‘I can’t, I just can’t’ over and over for a good 20 seconds was brilliant, as was the addition of Timon singing the first line to ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty and the Beast. There were only a few scenes that I can think of that didn’t make the 2019 version, but other than those (cut out perhaps due to the ‘realness’ of this movie), it was pretty much the same, down the camera angles and scene shots.

The verdict

Despite my gripes and my ‘meh-ness’ about a lot of aspects of the film, I really did enjoy watching it, and those first few bars of ‘Circle of Life’ had me grinning from ear to ear. I loved it in the moment. But now that I’ve taken a bit of time to think about it, and I’m not hyped on reliving my childhood but also the on-special M&Ms I scored at the supermarket about half an hour before the trailers started playing, it was probably only around a 3.5 star out of 5 rating for me. It was good, but like I said at the beginning, it would have been great had it not been for my love of the OGLK.

I would love to know your thoughts! Especially if you grew up with the animated version.

What did you think? Perhaps you loved it? Perhaps you’re like me and just thought it was a solid ‘good’?

Leave a comment and let me know!